Surry County Profile
Sharing Surry's
simple living with a national TV audience
When
it comes to simple living and small town life, Wanda Urbanska and her
husband wrote the book. Literally. And now she wants to put it all on
public television from her home base in the bosom of Surry County in
the shadow of the bucolic Blue Ridge Mountains.
Urbanska and her husband, Frank Levering, bade goodbye to the rat race
and frantic pace of Los Angeles 15 years ago to begin their new lives
just across the Surry County line in Orchard Gap, Va. But they like
calling North Carolina home and have set up shop pretty much as
fulltime goodwill ambassadors for the simple living traits of their
Mount Airy neighbors. She is making a career out of promoting the good
life of the Surry County region. He is a willing helpmate when not
minding a fruit orchard just over the state line.
Urbanska and Levering were so enamoured with their experiences of
arriving in the shadows of Surry County on a balmy spring of 1986 that
they wrote a book entitled Simple Living about their reasons for and
experiences of adopting the simplified lifestyles of country living
and Tar Heel mountain people. The book, now in its eighth printing,
has clearly been popular with readers across the country that wish
they could do what Urbanska and Levering did, as many have.
Urbanska, however, isn’t finished. More people, she feels, need to
know more about the good life of places like Surry County and the
pleasures of living there. She has established a business,
appropriately named The Simple Living Co., in the heart of Mt Airy’s
Main Street to help spread the word.
From a creaky and aging upstairs pair of rooms that fittingly convey
the company name, Urbanska is in the throes of putting together a
Public Broadcasting System series on, you guessed it, simple living.
She is teamed with New River Media Inc. of Washington, D.C., (where
nothing is simple) to research and produce the series that will
include at least 13 half-hour episodes to be shown nationwide on PBS,
starting in the fall of this year.
“My purpose is to show people a better way to live, to promote the
positives about simple living and, hopefully, to positively influence
the lives of people,” Urbanska says in explaining her plans. The
television series, not limited to filming in Surry County but focusing
on peaceful places like Surry and other North Carolina communities, is
being designed to provide viewers with practical ways to simplify
lifestyles and help create calmer, less cluttered and more meaningful
lives.
Surry County and its surroundings have become what Urbanska calls her
first real chance to put down roots. Growing up as what she calls a
“fact brat” with nomadic college professor parents who never
called anywhere home for long, Urbanska and Levering met as students
at Harvard University in the 1970s. They survived for awhile in the
fast lanes of Los Angeles with her as a journalist and he as a
screenwriter.
The life there was fun-filled, but not fulfilling. They wanted more
and they found it in simple living in North Carolina. The Surry County
way is now leading the way. PBS viewers will soon get a full view of
what the couple has seen from their own viewfinders in the Blue Ridge
foothills. — Ned Cline
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